Artist hikes length of Vermont, painting scenery along the way
MANCHESTER, Vt. — After hiking over 200 miles on the country’s oldest long-distance trail, Rob Mullen had just 3 miles to go in the rain to meet up with his wife and father for a break.
He kept dry with his foul weather gear as he walked down the trail with a backdrop of trees sprouting fall’s orange and yellow leaves and carrying trekking poles and a big stuffed blue pack on his back that held his precious painting kit.
Mullen, a 64-year-old wildlife and wilderness artist, is hiking the 272-mile Long Trail that runs the length of Vermont and over its highest mountains from the Canadian border to the Massachusetts state line and painting sights along the way.
He was nearing the end of his monthlong journey and planned to finish as soon as Saturday afternoon with half a dozen paintings and several thousand photos from
which to paint. He’s also coming away with sense of hope about the country from the people he’s met along the trail.
“I’ll be painting from this trip for a long time,” he said during his break off the trail in Manchester on a Tuesday.
Mullen, who has done a number of wilderness canoe trips in Alaska and Canada, had planned to paddle in the
Northwest territories of Canada this year with three others. But then the coronavirus pandemic hit.
He decided to do the entire Long Trail as a painting trip and to raise money with his art for the Vermont Wildlife Coalition, of which he is a board member, and the Green Mountain Club, which maintains the Long Trail.